Opening the Can of Worms: An Exploration Tool for Vortical Flows

Simon Stegmaier
Institute for Visualization and Interactive Systems

Ulrich Rist
Institute for Aerodynamics and Gasdynamics

Thomas Ertl
Institute for Visualization and Interactive Systems

University of Stuttgart, Stuttgart, Germany

A BSTRACT Gaining a comprehensive understanding of turbulent ows still poses one of the great challenges in uid dynamics. A wellestablished approach to advance this research is the analysis of the vortex structures contained in the ow. In order to be able to perform this analysis efciently, supporting visualization tools with clearly dened requirements are needed. In this paper, we present a visualization system which matches these requirements to a large extent. The system consists of two components. The rst component analyzes the ow by means of a novel combination of vortex core line detection and the 2 method. The second component is a vortex browser which allows for an interactive exploration and manipulation of the vortices detected and separated during the rst phase. Our system improves the reliability and applicability of existing vortex detection methods and allows for a more efcient study of vortical ows which is demonstrated in an evaluation performed by experts. CR Categories: I.3.3 [Computer Graphics]: RenderingFlow Visualization; Interactive

Keywords: Flow Features, Vortex Detection, Interactive Manipulation, 3D Vector Field Visualization 1 I NTRODUCTION
Figure 1: Advanced ow visualization by 2 vortices (colored with velocity magnitude, top) and conventional ow visualization using isosurfaces, stream ribbons, and cutting planes. Despite the additional insight gained from vortex visualization, analyzing the ow is nevertheless dicult since the structures are neither clearly separated nor is it clear how they interact and evolve.

Numerical ow simulation using supercomputers and experimental techniques like PIV (Particle Image Velocimetry) and LDA (Laser Doppler Anemometry) are valuable instruments for the development of new products in the car manufacturing and aerospace industry and other research areas where understanding of gaseous or liquid ows is required. In general, the value of these numerical and experimental ow simulations depends on the resolution of the computational grid and the number of velocity vectors that could be measured, respectively. Accordingly, much effort has been put into improving these simulation and measurement techniques, thereby pushing the size of the resulting data sets into regions where human cognition no longer sufces as a data analysis tool for the raw data. Some sort of ow visualization is, therefore, required for converting the raw data into a more meaningful representation. In the following, the term ow visualization is used synonymously to numerical ow visualization using streamlines, isosurfaces, etc. in contrast to physical ow visualization, the process of visualizing physical ows of gases and liquids. Visualizing the original untransformed data, however, is often insufcient for obtaining the desired insight. Fig. 1, bottom, shows
e-mail: e-mail:

(stegmaier|ertl)@vis.uni-stuttgart.de rist@iag.uni-stuttgart.de

a turbulent ow visualized with the commercial ow visualization package PowerVIZ [4]. For this data set, streamlines become almost useless due to a dominant velocity component along the longitudinal axis and the researcher is forced to analyze the ow based on the limited information revealed by the cutting planes and the isosurface computed on velocity magnitude. As a result, recent ow visualization techniques often resort to visualizing meta data, i.e., data that is obtained by transforming the raw datahere: vector eldinto a different and often more compact representation. Critical points and ow topology [7, 6], separation lines and surfaces [11], shock waves [12, 15], and vortices [9, 19, 22] are some well-established examples of this category of advanced ow visualization which use data reduction as a means for eased ow eld analysis. Of special importance is the detection and visualization of vortices since they carry most of the energy of vortical ows and, thus, contribute considerably to the ow evolution in future time steps. The method that is currently considered to be most effective for detecting vortical structures in incompressible ows (maybe except for ows with strong axial stretching, see [25]) is the 2 method proposed by Jeong and Hussain [9]. This 2 method can also be im-

plemented very efcientlyeven on programmable graphics hardware as was recently demonstrated [23]and is, thus, favored by many researchers working on uid dynamics. Unfortunately, in contrast to methods for detecting vortex cores which automatically obtain a segmented visualization, the 2 method only produces a scalar eld usually visualized by an isosurface. As a result, analyzing visualizations of 2 vortices is often more difcult than analyzing the results of less reliable but automatically segmenting core-detection approaches. In fact, for highly-turbulent ows a can of worms is obtained which hardly reveals the important information sought by uid dynamics engineers (Fig. 1, top). Thus, what is actually needed is an effective method for separating 2 vortices and, furthermore, a toola vortex browserwhich allows for an interactive exploration of the ow by manipulating and examining individual vortices. In this paper we present such a tool and an algorithm for vortex separation to accomplish this task. The development of both the algorithm and the custom exploration tool was driven by actual requirements of uid dynamics engineers cooperating with computer scientists in a nation-wide project dedicated to the fundamental research and comparison of experimental and numerical methods for the analysis of turbulent ows. The resulting tool was successfully evaluated by this group of experts. Our exposition is organized according to the components of the system. Sec. 2 gives related work; Sec. 3 elaborates on the separation algorithm, followed by Sec. 4 which gives a description of the vortex browser. An evaluation of the system demonstrating its effectiveness is given in Sec. 5. The paper concludes in Sec. 6.

3 3.1

VORTEX S EPARATION Basic Idea

As motivated in Sec. 1, the 2 method is popular due to its reliability in detecting vortices and the simplicity of the operations involved in the computation. This section will elaborate on this issue and point out the strengths and weaknesses of the algorithm. For this purpose, it is helpful to classify the 2 method according to the criteria dened by Jiang et al. [10]. The taxonomies used are: 1. The number of grid cells involved in the computations required for detecting a single vortex. 2. The algorithms ability to work reliably even when a constant delta is added to the velocities of the original vector eld, also referred to as Galilean invariance. 3. The vortex denition underlying the detection algorithm. Whether a detection method is well-accepted or not depends largely on how the algorithm matches the above criteria. For example, an algorithm that needs to examine grid points distributed all over the volume in order to detect a single vortex will exhibit a large memory foot print and thus be computationally more expensive than algorithms which only have to examine neighboring grid cells. And an algorithm which will no longer work when a delta is added to the velocities will be unable to detect vortices in time-varying data where swirling motion is only seen from within a moving reference frame. Finally, an algorithm which only detects vortical regions cannot generate a ow eld representation as compact as that produced by a method returning a list of vortex cores and thus might have to be declined when visualizing large data sets. To classify the 2 method, one needs to examine the algorithm in detail. Let u1 u(x) = u2 u3 be a 3D velocity eld from which vortices are to be extracted. For every grid point of this vector eld the Jacobian or velocity gradient tensor J = u is then computed and decomposed into a symmetric part S = (J + J T )/2 and an antisymmetric part = (J J T )/2: Si j =
1 2

R ELATED W ORK

Most similar to what is accomplished in this work is the visiometric approach to visualization proposed by Silver and Zabusky [21] and Fernandez et al. [5]. In both works, systems are presented to visualize, recognize, identify, classify, and automatically track observable ow eld features to give researchers new insight into what is happening in the data and to allow for the formulation or verication of theories describing the visualized process. Object identication in these papers is done by a region-growing approach, e.g., thresholding on vorticity magnitude. This approach was later applied to a 2 scalar eld by Rist et al. [17] to identify and separate vortices. None of these approaches take advantage of domain knowledge and all of them exclusively depend on scalar valuesfor the clustering algorithm it makes no difference whether the scalar eld has been derived from MRI images or from the 2 method to detect vortices. In any case, the same structures will be extracted. From a researchers point of view it makes a difference since structures in the ow eld might actually be connected while medical structures might be hindered from merging by tissue. Thus, the accuracy of feature extraction may be reduced if domain knowledge is not taken into account. However, while identifying features and providing means to understand these features are both important, the effectiveness of the latter depends on the sophistication of the former. In contrast to Silver and Fernandez who employ rather basic object identication algorithms and who lay their foci on the understanding issue, this paper strives to improve the feature identication using a combination of the 2 method (to which the visiometric approach is only insufciently applicable) and the algorithm proposed by Banks and Singer [2, 22]. In addition, we provide a basic accompanying ow exploration tool for illustration purposes. And this differentiates our work from the plethora of publications on vortex identication.

ui xj

uj xi

i j =

1 2

ui xj

uj xi

Seen from a physical point of view S denotes the strain-rate tensor and the rotation tensor. Both S and are squared and added to obtain a new 33 matrix. This matrix is real and symmetric and thus has exactly three real eigenvalues. These eigenvalues are computed and sorted in decreasing order: 1 2 3 . A vortex is then

foreach remaining seed point p0 if p0 is not in any previous vortex while the vortex skeleton continues (1) determine vorticity i at position pi (2) integrate vorticity i to predict new position pi+1 (3) determine vorticity i+1 at prediction pi+1 (4) pi+1 is the point of minimum pressure in the plane P i+1 (correction step) (5) i i + 1
Figure 2: The predictor-corrector vortex detection algorithm proposed by Banks and Singer [2, 22].

Figure 3: Comparison of 2 isosurface and vortex structures detected and separated with the proposed approach. The left image shows the 2 isosurface, the right image the separated vortices. As seen in the middle image (showing both the isosurface and the separated vortices), signicant dierences between the two visualizations are only seen in the boundary region. The shape of these structures, however, indicates that they correctly have not been classied as vortices.

dened as a connected region where two of the eigenvalues are negative. For visualizationas the name of the method impliesthe second largest eigenvalue is picked. Since 2 is a scalar and since for every grid point a corresponding 2 value can be computed, the 2 method transforms the original vector eld into a scalar volume which can then be visualized by any volume visualization technique, most commonly isosurfaces (Fig. 1, top). The more negative the chosen isovalue, the stronger the vortices that will be seen. A zero isovalue captures all vortices contained in the data set. Obviously, the computation of 2 values requires only the Jacobian which can be easily computed by central differences from the six direct neighbors1 ; thus, the algorithm is local and computationally cheap. Furthermore, velocity is not directly used to compute the scalar eld but rather its derivative (the velocity gradient tensor) so constant deltas when added to the vector eld cancel each other, i.e., the method is also Galilean invariant. And nally, the output of the 2 method is a scalar eld rather than a list of core lines so that the method sees vortices as regions. The latter is both good and bad: on the one hand a vortex has no dened extent so discarding the concept of a vortex core is valid; but on the other hand, vortical regions smoothly merge into each other such that vortices in the proximity of other vortices may be misleadingly seen as a single structure. It becomes clear that the major drawback of the 2 method is its inability to separate vortices. And it also becomes clear that there is a well-justied demand for an improved vortex detection method combining the benets of the 2 method with the benets of line-oriented vortex detection methods. Our approach to alleviate this drawback is to combine the 2 method with a core line detector. We chose the predictor-corrector approach proposed by Banks and Singer [2, 22]. This method is based on the assumption that pressure minima at vortex cores dene seed points for tracing core lines and that vorticity denes the corresponding vortex core direction in these locations. Accordingly, by integrating along the vorticity vector a prediction for the next vertex along the core can be made and the guess corrected by minimizing pressure in the plane perpendicular to the vorticity vector at the predicted position (Fig. 2). In order to obtain tubular structures, cross-sections can be determined by radially sampling the pressure eld in the planes perpendicular to the vortex core. Overall, this vortex detection approach is robust (due to its self-correcting nature) and very intuitive. But it also has a drawback: It does not work at low Reynolds numbers [9]. On the contrary, the 2 criterion lacks the capability to produce a list of separated vortices but it is able to capture the pressure minimum in a plane perpendicular to the vortex axis for both low and
1 We

high Reynolds number ows. The 2 method, therefore, perfectly complements the algorithm proposed by Banks and Singer if pressure is being replaced by the 2 scalar eld. And since pressure is hard to compute from a velocity eldor even unavailable at all in many experimentally obtained data setswhile 2 is not, this combination not only improves the reliability of existing vortex detection, it also widens the applicability of the methods. 3.2 Initialization

The algorithm proceeds by growing core lines from a set of selected seed points. In order to obtain a countable number of seed points, these initial seed points must lie on the grid; thus, the initial set contains as many seed points as there are grid pointsfor typical ow data sets millions or even tens of millions elements. Checking all of them would be extremely expensive. However, with the Banks/Singer method used in conjunction with 2 values, the initial set can be signicantly reduced. This reduction denes the initialization phase. There are three classes of grid points: Grid points with positive 2 values, grid points with negative 2 values which are not local minima, and grid points to which none of the previous applies. The rst group can readily be discarded since positive 2 values indicate non-vortical regions so no vortices will be found there. These grid points are assigned to the class NO_VORTEX. Grid points which do not dene local minima can also be discarded since they will be processed when tracing the core (Sec. 3.4). They are assigned to the class UNDECIDED. Thus, what remains are grid points with negative 2 values dening local minima. Whether these grid points will serve as starting points for vortex cores is unclear since again they might be eliminated if enclosed in a vortex tube. These grid points, therefore, dene the class POTENTIAL_SEED. The 229116250 data set shown in Fig. 3 has a total of 6,641,000 grid points. Of these, only 1,335 qualify as potential seed points. 273,571 grid points fall into the class UNDECIDED. The remaining vertices95.8 percentcan be discarded. 3.3 Growing the Skeleton

assume uniform grids for our discussion.

The process of growing the vortex core line is almost identical to the original implementation by Banks and Singer and differs only in implementation details. The description is, therefore, kept short. For each core line, a seed point has to be picked rst. We choose the seed point with the smallest 2 value. Since more negative 2 values indicate stronger swirling motion this strategy in general results in stronger and larger vortices and will immediately generate

3.4

Seed Point Elimination

A vortex core will rarely directly hit a grid point. It is, therefore, necessary to eliminate potential seed points in a post-processing step once a new vortex has been detected. This is accomplished by iterating over the individual slabs composing the vortex tube and performing sign tests of potential seed points with respect to the triangles comprising the slab surface. By computing the slab bounding box prior to performing the test, the number of potential seed points requiring testing is reduced. 3.5 Results

Fig. 3, right, shows the result of the vortex detection applied to a DNS data set of K-type transition experiments [1]. For comparison, Fig. 4 shows a photograph of this kind of transition2 . The photo was shot during an experiment in which smoke was inserted into the boundary layer to physically visualize vortices [16].
2 Actual measurements of physical ows take several months or even years. Experimental data of a ow recorded under conditions equivalent to those used for the numerical simulation that provided the data for our system evaluation are not yet available.

Figure 4: Photograph of actual K-type transition with physical vortex visualization using smoke inserted into the boundary layer [16]. In the upstream region of the ow near the trip wire (bottom), the -vortices with the characteristic -shaped heads are clearly visible.

a list of vortices sorted by strength. The initial seed point is then rened by minimizing 2 on the plane dened by the vorticity vector at the original seed point. Starting from the (rened) seed point, the skeleton is then grown in both directions. We rst take a step along the vorticity vector (or its negative, depending on the traced direction). For the new position we have to check, rst, whether the position lies inside any of the vortex tubes already found and, second, whether the position lies inside the vortex tube currently built. In either case, the skeleton is terminated and the vortex just found is added to the vortex list. Similar to the Banks/Singer method we next determine the core direction at the predicted position and again minimize the 2 value in the plane dened by this direction. Since in general the new position will not lie on a grid point, the quality of the structure extraction is signicantly inuenced by the quality of the interpolated 2 values and vorticity vectors. Therefore, a four-point Lagrange interpolation is used for this purpose. The 2 minimization problem in turn is solved with a direct search approach [8] since this relieves us from the burden of having to compute gradients using computationally expensive Lagrange interpolations. If the angle between the predicted vortex core direction and the direction at the 2 minimum does not exceed a given threshold the correction is accepted. In either case, the vortex cross section at the core line vertex is then determined by radially sending out rays lying in the plane perpendicular to the vortex core and sampling the 2 volume until the user-specied 2 isovalue is exceeded. As proposed by Banks and Singer the distances to the surface points are stored in a radii table for efcient encoding. Since this table represents a periodic function it can be approximated by a Fourier series which is an efcient way for storing the cross sections without loosing the ability to reconstruct them to any desired accuracy for visualization. If the cross section area falls below a given threshold (very close to zero) the vortex tube is considered to be closed and the skeleton growth terminates. The growth is also terminated if the vortex core length exceeds a pre-dened value to enforce core line termination where the core has run into a spiral.
Figure 5: Visualizations obtained using an eigenvector-based estimation of the core line direction and 2 values for determining core vertices. The lower image again shows a comparison of the 2 isosurface and the vortex structures detected with the eigenvector approach.

Figure 6: Particle trace computed on the velocity eld. While in general the trace encloses the vortex core, in some regions it travels parallel to the core line (see close-ups).

The computations for this 229116250 data set took 138 seconds on a PC equipped with an AMD 1.2 GHz processor and 512 MB memory. The program detected a total of 331 vortices. Red color was assigned to the vortex structure found rst whichdue to the seed point selection looking for the most negative 2 valueis also the strongest vortex. The weaker a vortex, the greater the hue value of the respective color in HSV space. When comparing the result to a standard 2 isosurface computed for the same isovalue that was chosen for determining cross sections, it becomes apparent that the visualizations match very closely. There are only two differences. First, some structures near the volume boundary are missing in the separated visualization and, second, some additional very ne structures evolve from the vortex tails. The structures referred to in the rst case are caused by inaccurate derivatives at the volume boundary. However, as the shape of these structures already implies, it is very improbable that in these regions instantaneous streamlines mapped onto a plane normal to the vortex core exhibit a roughly circular or spiral pattern, as one popular denition of vortices demands [18]. Therefore, the structures should not be classied as vortices. And they are notas is seen in the imageso errors made during the 2 computation do not nd its way into the nal visualization. In the second case, the additional ne structures are vortex core lines that have been obtained by setting the cross section area to a larger value, allowing for skeleton growth also beyond vortex tails. This is another benet when applying the Banks/Singer vortex detection method to a 2 scalar eld since it enables the researcher to identify connected structures hitherto visualized as separate vortices. If a higher accuracy is required, the system can be congured to better approximate the vortex tube cross sections and, accordingly, to better match the isosurface, thereby eliminating isolated bluish spots in the comparative visualizations showing both the isosurface and the vortex tubes. For the given images, 10 rays were used for sampling the 2 eld, ve coefcients where saved for the Fourier series, and 16 samples were used for displaying the vortex geometry. Sujudi and Haimes propose to use the eigenvector corresponding to the real eigenvalue of the Jacobian instead of vorticity for estimating core directions [24]. The eigenvector, however, is not uniquely dened with respect to sign and thus cannot be used as-is

Figure 7: Manipulating the vortex set. Top: Hiding the three central -vortices and selecting a single vortex for closer examination. Bottom: Inverting the selection. Using the colored buttons individual hidden vortices can be temporarily or permanently re-inserted.

for following the vortex core. We propose a simple solution to this problem in that we re-orient the eigenvector based on the sign of the dot product of the eigenvector and the vorticity vector. Fig. 5 shows visualizations obtained with this approach. The result hardly differs from what is obtained with a vorticity-based estimator and there is only a small discrepancy in the number of detected vortices: 309 vs. 331. In consideration of the high complexity involved in the computation of eigenvectors, using vorticity still seems a valid alternative. To further verify the quality of the presented approach, Fig. 6 shows a single -vortex extracted from the K-type transition data. For the image, a particle probe was placed near the detected vortex core and a trace computed by integrating the velocity eld. Ideally, the resulting trace should exactly enclose and follow the core line detected during the vortex segmentation process. In the example, this requirement is essentially fullled and inaccuracies are only seen on a short core segment where the particle travels parallel to the vortex core (see close-up). The particle leaves the core through the appendix shown in the upper right corner near the -shaped vortex segment. This is correct behavior and must be accounted to the strong velocity component along the longitudinal axis. As for the interpolations involved in tracing the core line and determining the vortex tube cross sections, a four-point Lagrange interpolation

questions arising in practice are: What is the volume of a certain structure? What is its swirling strength, circulation, and vorticity? How about induced velocity, vortex stretching, and dissipation? 4.2 Vortex Manipulation

None of the above questions can be answered when considering the vortex set in its entirety; thus, means are required to manipulate the vortex. For this purpose, the individual vortices are inserted into a custom scenegraph which allows for simple manipulations like picking and transformations. This, however, is insufcient since researchers either want to see a certain vortex or do not want to see certain vortices being irrelevant for the special application or obscuring the region of interest. Our system, therefore, provides hiding and inversion functionality (Fig. 7). In the top image, the central -vortices have been hidden. Another vortexone that would have been visualized as two separate structures with standard 2 isosurfaceshas been dragged out of the ow and is shown (with a selection box) in the front. Its volume is shown in the lower right corner. In the bottom image the selection has been inverted in order to allow for a closer examination of exactly the hidden vortices. In either case, for each hidden vortex a button colored with the respective vortex color is inserted. By moving the mouse cursor over any of these buttons, the corresponding vortex is shown at its original location. By clicking the buttons, the corresponding hidden vortex is permanently re-inserted into the visualized vortex set. Of course, the buttons can be disabled if desired. Manually dening the vortex set may become tedious if there are dozens or even several hundreds of vortices. However, since the ow dynamics is dominated by the largest vortices, this task can be partially automated. In the system, this functionality is provided by means of a length lter which can be used to eliminate smaller and weaker vortices. 4.3
Figure 8: Use of slices. Slices can be used to display vector plots of the velocity eld and to clip unwanted regions (top) and to obtain dense representations of associated scalar elds like velocity or vorticity magnitude, 2 values, oras shown in the imageshear stress.

Visualization Techniques

From an information visualization point of view the above functionality denes the focus. The vortices, however, have been extracted from a ow eld and this context should not be lost. One software feature to provide context information has already been shown in Fig. 6. The user can freely position a particle probe inside the simulation volume and integrate both along the velocity eld and the

(in contrast to a less costly trilinear interpolation) is required in order to obtain accurate results. 4 T HE VORTEX B ROWSER

The vortex set shown in Fig. 3 comprises 331 vortices. This includes weak and strong vortices, vortices with short and long cores, and vortices which cover small and large regions of the simulation volume. Obviously, some ltering must be applied before the data can be thoroughly and efciently analyzed. This is accomplished with the second component of our system, the vortex browser. 4.1 Aims

The research of uid dynamics engineers is directed towards an increased understanding of uid dynamics. This understanding refers to both fundamental questions as well as to specic applications where the ow around an actual device (automobile, airplane wing, etc.) has to be examined in order to, e.g., improve efciency or to reduce noise generation. To gain this insight, uid dynamics engineers like to study the interactions of different uid ow entities and to view and take into consideration meta data. Typical

Figure 9: Combined visualization of separated vortices and slices showing both scalar eld data (shear stress) and a LIC representation of the velocity eld.

vorticity eld. Regarding the former one, it should be noted that no real particle will actually follow the present streamlines because the velocity eld changes with time. However, the deviation of instantaneous streamlines from path lines of real particles depends on the temporal rate of change of the ow. The latter is smaller near the legs of the -vortex and higher where many tangled vortices interact. Therefore, the interactive streamline tool is still useful in the rst part of the data eld to get a qualitative understanding of the ow but dangerous or even misleading in the second. Thus, a more reliable probe like the vorticity line probe is needed. So-called vorticity lines, i.e. eld lines of the instantaneous vorticity eld, are (by denition) everywhere parallel to the vorticity vector. This means that they should follow the vortex axis and shear layers everywhere in the ow. However, using vorticity lines alone as a means of visualization would not be advantageous, because they have the disadvantage that no distinction is made between vortices and shear layers, and that regions with small vorticity cannot be distinguished from regions with large vorticity. On the other hand, when used in an interactive manner together with the extracted vortices, they provide a useful tool to check the physical accuracy of our vortex identication and extraction. In contrast to eld lines of the instantaneous velocity eld (streamlines) vorticity lines are Galilean invariant such that they can be used with more condence in an unsteady ow situation, as the one discussed here. Therefore, using the particle probe with the velocity eld can, at best, show regions of strong attraction (like the strong vortex tubes) in a qualitative manner in contrast to an integration of the vorticity eld which is quantitatively accurate. Since particle traces give only meaningful information when positioned carefullywhich, in particular, also applies to vorticity lines [14]a more intuitive technique is needed to visualize the velocity and vorticity elds. For this purpose, movable slices with vector plots of variable resolutions have been integrated into the system. Although this visualization is simple and dated, it is nevertheless the most often used technique in physical ow visualization. Fig. 8, top, shows a screenshot of the visualization technique applied to K-type transition data. As seen in the images, the slices can also be used to clip unwanted parts of the visualization and to obtain a dense representation of any scalar eld associated with the vector eld, like, e.g., shear stress. When vector plots are insufcient, dense representations of the original vector eld are often

Figure 11: Stereo visualization of vortex set to help in understanding and identifying complex interwoven structures. To be viewed with red/cyan anaglyph glasses.

more useful. Therefore, line-integralconvolution (LIC) visualizations of the ow projected onto any movable slice can be shown [3]. Fig. 9 gives another example of movable slices and the use of LIC. Shear stress is of special importance for the understanding of vortices. A uid volume owing along an object boundary is nonuniformly decelerated by friction with the wall. This in turn induces shear stress and nally swirling motion. Once the rotating uid volume separates from the wall, a new vortex is born. The system allows the researcher to mix the visualization of separated vortices with an isosurface visualization of this important phenomenon. An example is shown in Fig. 10. The required shear layer computations are based on the second invariant I2 of the strain-rate tensor S [13]: I2 = = 1 (Sii S j j Si j Si j ) 2 2 2 2 S11 S22 + S22 S33 + S11 S33 S12 S13 S23 .

Since the strain-rate tensor is required for computing the 2 scalar eld, anyway, computing the shear layer is virtually a by-product which comes for free. As the visualizations in Figs. 3 might suggest, visualizing vortical ows results in very complex geometries. Depending on the chosen isovalue, the mesh of interwoven structures may be hard to analyze. Dissecting the set using the tools described above can alleviate the situation but it fails to ease the understanding at the very beginning. Therefore, a red/cyan anaglyph mode can be enabled making it easier for the researcher to mentally visualize the ow eld and to perform his work. Fig. 11 gives a screenshot. 5 E VALUATION

Figure 10: Combined visualization of separated vortices, particle probe integrating the velocity eld, semi-transparent slice showing a vector plot of the velocity eld, and shear layers.

The present work was developed in close cooperation with uid dynamics engineers and has been evaluated by this group of experts and practitioners. Both benets and problems of the system were found. The main benet was found to be the novel combination of reliable vortex detection (showing also connected components) and selective visualization, a combination allowing for a great complexity reduction necessary for analyzing current simulation data. Once vortices have been extracted, the structures can be picked, hidden, extracted, and freely moved and rotated. Of course, the latter is standard functionality also found in more general visualization

packages used so far (Tecplot, COVISE) and, indeed, the vortex detection part can be decoupled from the system to provide a set of vortices to be visualized with standard tools. However, in contrast to standard tools our system is problem and meta-dataoriented; thus, analyzing ows with our tool was found to be signicantly more efcient than with general tools, both from a usability pointof-view (intuitive, adapted user interface) and a technical point-ofview (speed). Furthermore, the program does not require advanced graphics hardware features like programmable vertex or fragment processors or specic operating systems and can be used with virtually any workstationa property not to be underrated in environments where most computations are performed on supercomputers and local computing hardware is predominantly acquired for computationally cheap post-processing. Accordingly, the possibility to view the visualizations in stereo using inexpensive red/cyan glasses was preferred over more sophisticated stereo technology requiring more expensive and less ubiquitous technology. On the other hand, albeit the system can help to make the work of uid engineers more efcient, it was also found that more meta data was needed and that the amount of data and structures was still too large for a straightforward analysis. 6 C ONCLUSION

We have presented a novel algorithm for detecting and separating vortices from 3D vector elds. The resulting vortex set can be ltered to concentrate on the most relevant structures and the extracted vortices can be manipulated individually. Various visualization techniques were combined in order to improve the analysis possibilities. The system has been found by a group of experts to be of great value for analyzing vortical ows but it fails to reduce the original data to a level making processing trivial. Since unsteady ows must currently be analyzed by processing the different time steps separately, incorporating automatic feature tracking as proposed by Silver and Wang [20] will be an important step towards a more useful tool. Furthermore, additional visualization techniques should be evaluatedlike, e.g., texture advection which, however, currently fails to produce satisfying visualizations when applied to 3D dataas well as additional quantication functionality to distract the researchers from fancy images and let them concentrate again on the physics. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS We are grateful to the German Research Council (DFG) for nancing this work as part of SPP 1147. R EFERENCES
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